VIDEO: No Joke. Choice Matters. Everywhere

This video and the post below were developed by Pathfinder International and originally appeared on their blog on July 23, 2012.

Can you imagine walking 18 miles to get contraceptives? Or being told your clinic is out of stock? It seems absurd right? But in many countries, this happens every day. Doctors are overworked, under supported, and stressed out. Women struggle to care for their large families and access the services they need, sometimes waiting hours, even overnight to visit a clinic.

We try to make it funny in this video but the reality is no joke. Choice matters about if, when, and how often to have children; choice matters about getting tested for and STI or HIV; choice about sexual and reproductive health matters for all women, everywhere.

If you agree, share this video today! The more people who understand the issues, the more voices we have calling for change.

Even here in the United States, we see barriers to reproductive choice. However, oftentimes those barriers are even more challenging in developing countries. Shannon Wu, one of our donors said, “Most women in America have access to knowledge and health care when it comes to their sexual and reproductive life. But in other parts of the world, women’s health is almost always the last thing to be discussed or taken care of, if at all.”

Right now more than 222 million women want, but lack access to contraceptives. One woman dies every 90 seconds during pregnancy or childbirth because she lacks access to maternal care. And HIV is the number one cause of death for women of reproductive age in the developing world.

If you want to change these numbers, and improve the lives of women, take a simple action now: share the video. Help start an important conversation with your friends, family, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, colleagues that reproductive health care is no joke. Choice matters.

We’d love to know what you think of the video. Did it remind you of the reproductive health care issue that drives you to make a difference? Use the comments below and thank you for sharing!

A note from the IYWG

Young people face multiple negative sexual and reproductive outcomes including unintended pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and maternal mortality and morbidity. Each year, lack of access to family planning services leads to approximately 7.4 million unintended pregnancies among adolescents, and each year nearly 70,000 women between the ages of 15 and 19 die in childbirth. Preventing unintended pregnancies among adolescents would reduce the number of maternal deaths as well as improve educational and employment opportunities for young women. To learn more about young people and contraceptive,s view our blog archive for contraceptives posts or our topic page on Contraceptive Options for Young People.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

This blog is brought to you by the Interagency Youth Working Group (IYWG) with financial assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The content is managed by FHI, which functions as the secretariat for the IYWG.

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.